Chairperson, hon members in the run up to the 2010 World Cup, the SAPS under the leadership of then General Bheki Cele asked the Department of the Public Works to give them two floors of accommodation in Pretoria, instead the department provided them with 17 floors at the princely sum of R2,8 million per month. The deal title the tidy sum of R500 million, there was no tender process, no observations of the Treasury regulations. The deal was
done with the property mogul Roux Shabangu. The acting director- general at the time was none other than a current Public Works Director-General Adv Sam Vukela. Both Cele and Vukela lost their jobs at the time, but in compliance with a well established revolving door policy of the ANC government, the former police bosses now the Minister of Police and Vukela as a reinstated the DG and so we must question the credibility of any budget that Vukela has anything to do with.
A perusal of the Annual Performance Plan of the Department of Public Works will leave one thinking that they had been incorporated in the Department of Economic Development or Labour. The bulk of the APP talks to the employment opportunities provided by the department and the drive for transformation of suppliers to the department. Very little mention is made about supplying quality service in respect of engineering, maintenance and building cards. The situation of the property management, trading entities is equally dire. The entity is the second, so it is the largest landlord in the country. They have been struggling to define their asset register since 2014 and still have no idea of the value of their assets. To know the value of an asset, you must know its condition. It is therefore impossible to budget properly for the maintenance of an asset. Inevitably the department will continue in the guise of the glorified employment
agency to lurch from one crisis to the other under the leadership of the dodgy DG seeking out the next enrichment opportunity. Accordingly the DA cannot support this Budget. I thank you. [Applause.]